Adjusting Mid-Season

An old friend of the blog - anonymous - has a very long comment about the state of his team. I'll summarize quickly.

He's in a 6x6 league that uses win-loss differential, saves, holds, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP. His Opening Day roster is posted here.

So what went wrong?

When I devised my plan, I figured that several of my relievers would post good WHIPs and ERAs, but I’ve been greatly disappointed. I knew I’d be terrible in Ks (I’m second-to-last), but I thought with W-L, I’d finish somewhere in the middle (I’m second-to-last here, as well). My plan isn’t working too well.

Anonymous poses several options to fix his season. He presents the following options:

1) Start benching struggling relievers like (Luis) Ayala and (Cla) Meredith and risk putting them in when they get shelled?
2) Dump Rich Hill or Chris Volstad and pick up a decent reliever like Cory Wade who might be able to help my WHIP and ERA?
3) Bench (Josh) Banks and (Seth) McClung and wait for (Jim) Johnson and (Anibal) Sanchez?
4) Make a trade with a low-place team for a good reliever?
5) Ditch my plan and get more starters?
6) Stay the course, knowing that Ayala, Meredith, (Manny) Corpas and (Matt) Cain are going to better their overall numbers —- then use Johnson or Sanchez as reinforcements either for my rotation or for a trade?

I was going to try and answer these questions one at a time, but an integrated answer would be best (and save this from becoming a 5,000 word essay and putting readers like Slyke to sleep).

First, remember that it's a little easier to gain or maintain in counting categories than it is in rate categories like ERA/WHIP. If you were already at the top or the middle in ERA/WHIP, I'd tell you to be careful with your pick-ups. But, in your case, you almost have nothing to lose.

With that in mind, you might as well hold on to Ayala, who is 2nd in holds in the N.L. with 18. You can consider dropping Meredith, but you should be looking more at counting stats now than saving your ERA/WHIP.

If you are going to save your ERA/WHIP, it's going to be by grabbing as many starting pitchers as you can. They don't all have to pan out. Your success rate doesn't have to be 100%. You only need a couple of starting pitchers to work out to turn things around.

Keep your expectations low, though. You're not going to win the categories. You probably only need to gain 4-8 points to make your move.

Your big moves should be in the quantitative categories. I'm not sure how far back you are in strikeouts, but try to get guys with high K/IP rates, even if they give up a lot of hits or walk a lot of guys. Again, that's going to be hard in a deep N.L. league with seven man reserve lists. But you have to try.

One problem I've noticed is that a lot of your pitchers are on bad teams. To try and save your win/loss differential, one angle you might try to work is swapping a superior pitcher like Cain on a bad team for a weaker pitcher on a stronger MLB team. I don't know how far back you are here, but improving your W/L differential isn't going to happen with pitchers on bad teams.

So I guess I'm telling you to ditch your plan. Your best bet now is to try and pick up as many points as you can in the counting categories and hope that your ERA and WHIP sort themselves out. It's obviously a risky play, but you're probably going to have to take some chances in order to dig yourself out of the hole your underperforming pitchers have put you in.